Hold Fast What is Good
1 Thessalonians 5:19-22
Introduction.
At the end of Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, there are several exhortations that he gives.
We have spent a good deal of time talking of some of them: rejoicing, prayer, and thanksgiving.
Today, I think it would be good to discuss what comes next: do not quench the Spirit, do not despise prophecies, test all things.
Ultimately, these exhortations lead us to the idea that we ought to “hold fast what is good” and to “abstain from every form of evil.”
This is the idea that we must come away with when we read these verses.
To hold fast means that you don’t want to let go.
We have talked a lot about holding fast in our series on Hebrews up to this point.
It is one of the major themes of that book, to hold fast to the faith—Paul here says to hold fast to what is good, avoiding what is evil.
If you love something or someone, you will hold onto that person or thing with every fiber of your being.
After only a few weeks of dating Victoria, I knew that I had to hold on to this one—she was and is a rare gem.
After a couple of months, I knew I had to hold on even faster.
You don’t want to take any chances on that sort of thing.
If you truly love the Lord and love what is good, you’re not going to want to let it go for anything!
This passage here is a favorite of Pentecostals.
They claim that since we don’t believe in modern-day miraculous spiritual gifts, then we must be quenching the Spirit or despising prophecies.
That, of course, couldn’t be further from the truth.
Since we don’t hold that they are true miraculous gifts, then we’re not quenching anything but a false display of God’s power, despising only the facade of spirituality.
But if this isn’t talking about those miraculous gifts, what is it talking about?
If it is referring to them, then what application can we take from it today?
Preview.
Quench Not the Spirit.
Despise Not Prophecies.
Test All Things.
Hold on to Good, Abstain from Evil.
Body.
Quench Not the Spirit and Despise Not Prophecies.
To quench something means to put it out.
There are several situations in which we might use this word.
We might say that we are thirsty and I need to quench my thirst.
That means quelling that thirst, getting rid of it with a drink of water.
We also might quench a fire, to extinguish it, or to put it out.
Metaphorically, we can quench one’s spirit, to suppress or stifle it.
When we are in a situation to rejoice, to be excited about something, that excitement can be ruined by someone else’s sour attitude.
“Hey man, I’m getting married!” “Who would marry you?”
Remember, we are to rejoice with those who rejoice, right? (Rom. 12:15).
If you react negatively to great news, you are not rejoicing with one who rejoices, you are quenching his spirit.
What about that feeling we get right after conversion?
We are excited, we are on fire!
But after some discouragement or other hurdles come up, how easy is it for that fire to be quenched?
In context, however, this is unlikely the type of spirit that Paul is talking about.
Sometimes the word “spirit” is used to refer to attitude or our own personal spirit.
“That’s the spirit!” or “I’ll be with you in spirit.” – both meanings are used in Scripture.
No, Paul is likely talking about the Holy Spirit.
How does one quench the Holy Spirit?
Does that mean we have control over the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Godhead?
Yes and no. In the age of miracles, we find that “spirit of the prophets are subject to the prophets” (1 Cor. 14:32).
The miraculous spiritual gifts that the early Christians had access to were under the control of the people who had them.
Otherwise Paul’s instructions in that chapter to be silent or to speak one at a time would be pointless (1 Cor. 14:27-31).
Many who believe in the modern-day miraculous spiritual gifts will claim they have no control when the “Spirit takes over.” That is not what we read about in the N.T.
This also means that keeping silent where appropriate is not quenching the Holy Spirit—Paul wouldn’t issue conflicting commands by the inspiration of that same Spirit.
So how can we quench the Spirit? By embracing what is evil instead of abstaining from it. By letting go of what is good instead of holding fast to it.
We can quench the Spirit by ignoring what He says.
And how does the Spirit speak to us today? Through His Word.
We quench the Holy Spirit by letting our Bibles collect dust on the shelf. We quench the Spirit by merely reading and not meditating on His Word. We quench the Spirit by not considering all of what the Bible says on a particular matter and by reading into the text whatever we want. We quench the Spirit by being Sunday-only Christians, forgetting who our Lord is the rest of the week.
We are Christians—let us act like it!
Despise Not Prophesies.
This has a similar meaning to quenching the Spirit.
Of course to despise something means that you hate it, you want nothing to do with it.
This is referring to something occurring in the age of miracles, when miraculous spiritual gifts were still available.
And as we saw with other aspects of miraculous gifts, controlling it was not despising it.
But how should we view this in the modern age?
The non-miraculous prophet.
If you recall some months ago, we covered the concept of “prophesying in proportion to the faith” from Romans 12:6.
In that sermon, we defined a non-miraculous form of prophecy as “declaring the purposes of God, reproving and admonishing the wicked, comforting the afflicted” from the Scriptures.
This is something a preacher does at least every week, perhaps more.
He may not foretell, but he does forth-tell.
And if we despise the things he preaches that are from the Word of God, where might we end up?
Perhaps you’ve known someone to have heard a preacher on Sunday morning, but by Sunday afternoon they seem to have forgotten everything that was just said—perhaps you’ve been that person—he couldn’t even wait till Monday!
Assuming the preacher is teaching truth, wouldn’t this be despising his words, and wouldn’t it be the same as letting go of what is good and embracing what is evil?
We come to worship for a reason—really several reasons, not the least of which is to be edified and admonished by the words preached from God’s Word.
Let us have a heart soft enough to hear these words and apply them to our lives.
Test All Things.
This is one of my favorite verses.
It shows us that blind faith is never expected of us.
In fact, we are expected to “test all things.”
The Bible invites investigation and never expects anyone just to take it at its word.
This is fairly unique among the world’s religions.
Islam demands full and unquestioning submission to Muhammad and his teachings.
Mormonism asks you to rely on how you feel when you read their book.
Many people in various denominations claim they don’t need a reason for their faith, basing it on nothing more their feelings.
Brothers and sisters, that’s not a valid test.
In every reasonable test that we can run on the various religions and their sacred texts, the Bible always passes with flying colors.
But, while this passage can be applied to such tests, that’s not exactly what this is talking about.
Test the spirits, whether they are of God (1 John 4:1).
This verse shares a lot of similarities with this passage in 1 John 4.
But how do we test the spirits, particularly when we do not have access to the miraculous?
Well, John was in that age when he had to warn others about all the false prophets that had gone out into the world.
It was a problem then just as it is now.
There are various tests found throughout Scriptures that we could use of a non-miraculous nature.
Jonathan Edwards, a prominent Puritan preacher in the 18th century, came up with these questions based on 1 John 4:1-8 on a proper test for the spirits: Do they exalt the true Christ? Do they oppose worldliness? Do they point people to the Scriptures? Do they elevate the truth? Do they produce love for God and others?
Some of these things seem repetitive, but the ideas here are sound.
Bottom line: does it align with the Word of God?
After all, when you think about it, there really is only one test: does it agree with what we know is from God, the God-breathed Scriptures?
This is the rubric by which we must test all things, including and especially everything that I say.
This is how we test the spirits to determine whether they are from God, whether we need to hold on to it or to abstain from it.
Hold on to Good, Abstain from the Evil.
Once we have our test, we end up with our results.
Our results can either be good or bad.
When reading a book by a denominational author, for instance, I’m sure there is plenty of good.
We should hold on to the good that is written, and leave off the bad.
But who is to decide what is good or bad?
Clearly, it is God who decides, not us.
It’s not always easy to determine what is good and what is bad, but some things are quite obvious.
For those things that are not easy, ask someone who might be more knowledgeable to help you figure it out.
Christianity, after all, is a taught religion, as we see Philip teaching the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8.
There were some things he didn’t understand, and Philip explained it to him.
Once we have our results, we must do something.
If we find that it is good, we must not let it go!
As we said earlier, once you find a good thing, hold onto it!
As I found Victoria, I knew I couldn’t let her go, and now she’s mine and I am hers. I couldn’t be happier.
Hold on to what is good, practice it, do it, believe it!
If we find that it is evil, however, we must abstain from it.
We often apply this to an extreme degree, that even if something isn’t evil, if it appears to be evil, then we must abstain from it.
That is actually a very good practice.
It helps our influence, keeping rumors down and things of that nature.
If I happened to be counseling a woman other than my wife alone in my office for several hours, well, that’s not a good look.
But that’s not exactly what this verse is saying.
Another way of translating “form” or “appearance” is “kind.”
So we are to abstain from every kind of evil.
There are certainly various forms in which evil takes, so we must abstain from them all.
John again mentions three forms in 1 John 2:16—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.
All the sins we can commit fall into one of these three categories.
There are so many vice lists that we see in Scripture, so many sins mentioned, but if we remember to love God and love our neighbors, while avoiding unlawful desires and pride, we’ll be in a good place, won’t we?
These sins are things we need to abstain from and avoid.
Not putting them at arm’s reach, but putting them so far from us they never cross our minds.
Is that easy? Certainly not. But we’re all works in progress, are we not?
After all, that’s what repentance is, isn’t it?
Conclusion.
This morning, let us not quench the Spirit, despise prophecies, or cling to what is evil.
Instead let us test all things and hold fast what is good.
I hope you have tested this sermon, and I trust you have found it good.
Hold fast to such things, hold fast and never let them go.
Sure, people come and go, they leave or fail, but God’s Word lasts forever.
Trust in Him and what the Scriptures have for us.
Those same Scriptures tell us how we can be saved.
They tell of a Savior, Jesus Christ, who came from heaven to die on a cross for us.
He did this to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins, because only He could do it.
And through Him our sins are forgiven, but we must be obedient to His word.
W+3e must believe, repent, confess, and be baptized.
But that’s not all, we must also hold fast to what is good, and remain faithful unto death to receive that crown of life (Rev. 2:10).